My Question of the Day: When Kirkland cleans the house, he’d prefer if his four-year-old son, Thad, weren’t so willing to help. What Kirkland can get done in 15 minutes takes almost twice as long when he has to show and explain to Thad how to do the same task, too. Do you think Kirkland should let Thad help or find something else to do to occupy his son’s time so he can get finished faster?

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My Question of the Day: A male teacher at a private, faith-based elementary school–we’ll call him Adam–asks for a meeting with his principal after school. The principal–we’ll call him Mr. Davis–agrees to meet with Adam after the final bell and all the students have safely departed the building. When Adam arrives for the meeting, he finds Mr. Davis in a reasonably good mood, and they chat a bit about Adam’s recent marriage. Mr. Davis comments on how much he enjoyed the exchange of traditional vows and how he had an opportunity to meet Adam’s parents and siblings. After the small talk, the principal asks Adam why he wanted to meet.

Adam tells Mr. Davis that he’d like to take advantage of the Family and Medical Leave Act, so that he can stay home with his wife and their newborn son. Mr. Davis is quiet for a moment and asks if everything is okay with the baby since he was born prematurely. Adam corrects the principal and tells him that his son was not born prematurely. Again, Mr. Davis is quiet for a moment. Adam waits patiently for an answer as he notices Mr. Davis looking at his calendar. Adam assumes that Mr. Davis is trying to determine how long the school will have to be without him if Mr. Davis honors his request to give him the time off.

After about three minutes, Mr. Davis says that he will get back to Adam in a few days. The men shake hands, and Adam leaves the office. Saturday morning Adam receives a letter of termination in the mail. The letter explains that Adam has violated the moral values of the school by conceiving a child out of wedlock.

Is this discrimination? Does Adam have any legal recourse to fight his termination?

My 2 Cents: This is another one of those “ripped from the headlines” questions.

I thought it was interesting that several of you spoke about a morals clause in Adam’s contract when I made no mention of such a clause. I only said that the principal said Adam was fired for violating the moral values of the school.

If, indeed, Adam’s employment contract did contain a morals clause, and he is in violation of that clause, then it is not discrimination, and his termination should be upheld if he intends to fight it.

If, however, Adam’s employment contract did not contain a morals clause, but the principal simply disagreed with what Adam did in his personal life, this is discrimination, and Adam’s termination should not be upheld if he intends to fight it.

Read Teacher fired for premarital sex to see where I got the idea for the question. I changed the “main character” to a man in my question, but read what actually happened to the woman who found herself in this situation.

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.

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My Question of the Day: Every other Friday, a parent has the option to volunteer to read to your child’s preschool class during story hour. Before s/he can do so, s/he must inform the teacher what book s/he plans to read. The teacher then sends permission slips home with each student that lists the name of the book to be read, the parent reading the book and asking you to check “yes” or “no” to your child participating in that story hour.

Your preschooler comes home with a permission slip that states the next reading will be by so-and-so’s parent and the book s/he will be sharing with the class is Heather Has Two Mommies by Lesléa Newman. The story hour is a week and a half away and the permission slip has to be returned in three days. What do you do?

RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.

FYI: You may edit your comment for up to 30 minutes after posting. After 30 minutes, your comment can no longer be revised.